Book: CINEMATIC DESTINIES
Character name: Jean Mercier
What is your profession?
Filmmaker.
Where do you live?
Paris, but I’m a nomad. I seek out exotic locations for my films and live in seclusion with the cast and crew. My latest film is set in various locations in Iceland.
Why did you choose to film there?
It is otherworldly. Transporting. The landscape is actually ugly in a way, all the brown and black rocks and dirt as far as one can see. Yet it’s spectacularly beautiful and singular too. Breathtaking. Almost as if the ugliness has turned inward on itself, creating something extraordinary, something one can hardly turn away from. Beauty from despair. Like much in this wasteland we call life.
You’re known for being a bit dystopian.
We are who we are. Life is what it is. There’s no need to sugarcoat it.
What can you reveal about the other locations for the film?
We are filming a pivotal scene in Lake Myvatin, the most beautiful place I have ever seen. But beware of the midges. The region is named after swarms of small black flies called midges. They only live for seven days. Beauty always has another side. I quite love the midges. They are entirely harmless. To most, their presence here makes imperfect something that otherwise would be too perfect. These tragic little beings live such a short time yet perform such an important job during their brief blip on this planet. They are the protectors of pure, untouched beauty. Sometimes the guardian of beauty is dark and ugly. Keeps things honest.
Is that how you see yourself?
The landscape is like the fourth character in the film because it’s a metaphor for how I understand my role as an artist, as a truth teller. I need to go dark so that others may see the light. Afterall, artists must be unafraid.
Your greatest regret?
Regrets are a waste of time, but I have screwed things up with the women in my life. Perhaps I missed out on something. Witnessing the enduring love story of my friends Ella Sinclair and Finn Forrester makes me wonder if perhaps there is more in this life. They give me hope. The purity of their love can crack open even the darkest heart, such as my own.
Greatest achievement?
My films. They have been my life. And my friendship with Ella, the one woman I didn’t screw things up with.
At your age, do you think about your legacy?
That’s a polite way of saying I’ll be a corpse soon. Looking back, nostalgia, sentimentality, and naval gazing are all tragic wastes of human imagination. It is true that I shall die someday not so far off. Until then I shall live. Art never dies.
Red Carpet Romance #3
For fans of Tessa Bailey and Hannah Grace, Cinematic Destinies is a feel-good, contemporary romance about a trio of adult children searching for love and beauty in the shadow of their parents’ legendary Hollywood fairy-tale romance.
Legendary actor Finn Forrester and his wife philosopher Ella Sinclair Forrester met on the location shoot for Jean Mercier’s film Celebration. The world has been captivated by their fairy-tale romance since Finn famously proposed on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. As the couple now prepares to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary, they wonder if their children will ever find love.
Eldest daughter Betty is excelling in a medical residency program in New York City—and has convinced herself that distancing herself from emotions is the path to success. Youngest son Albert, a recent college graduate, is trying to find his footing in Boston as he struggles with his identity. Free-spirited Georgia, her mother’s spitting image and an actress following in her father’s footsteps, has been cast in Jean Mercier’s final film, mysteriously titled Beauty. When she arrives on set in Iceland and meets her costar, sparks fly. Is history repeating itself? How has growing up in the shadow of the world’s most iconic love story affected each of the Forrester children?
In this highly anticipated conclusion to The Location Shoot and After the Red Carpet, we see how Finn, Ella, and their children fulfill their cinematic destinies.
Romance Contemporary [She Writes Press, On Sale: September 2, 2025, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781647429485 / eISBN: 9781647429492]
Patricia Leavy, PhD, is an award-winning, best-selling author. She was formerly Associate Professor of Sociology, Chairperson of Sociology & Criminology, and Founding Director of Gender Studies at Stonehill College. She has published more than forty books; her work has been translated into many languages, and she has received more than forty book honors. She has also received career awards from the New England Sociological Association, the American Creativity Association, the American Educational Research Association, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the National Art Education Association. In 2018, she was honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame and SUNY-New Paltz established the “Patricia Leavy Award for Art and Social Justice.” Leavy currently resides in Kennebunk, Maine.
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